


i could be your beacon

by umbrellabirds



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Fluff, One Shot, Pining, Sexuality Crisis, but like repressed, comphet, lesbian Jester, this was honestly therapeutic to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22384276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umbrellabirds/pseuds/umbrellabirds
Summary: “Are you in love with me, Beau?”Beau groaned into her hands. “I don’t know. I just don’t know what I feel.”“I know something about that,” said Jester softly.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 6
Kudos: 206





	i could be your beacon

Jester had always loved the ocean. As she stood on the cliffside, the sea breeze lifting her hair and swishing her skirts round her ankles, she breathed a deep sigh, trying to force down her tears. The air was chilly and smelled of salt. As always, she knew, the fluid rumble of the waves would calm down the restless, troubled parts of her soul. 

Exhaling, she sat down on the very edge, her legs swinging over the beach twenty feet below, and brought out her sketchbook. The others hadn’t asked to come on this walk with her--just as well, she wanted some time to gather her thoughts--but she could bring the scenery back to them! Maybe they would want to come next time, when she felt right! The soft waves below, webbed with a spume of white bubbles, the wind that played through the waxy green grass, the gnarled little fir trees that studded the field behind her, the little bright heads of flowers that swung and bobbed in the buffeting wind, the crumbly, sun-warmed sandstone cliffs, a short climb down to the sand… how could she capture it all? She could see for miles and miles. 

Deciding to start small, she doodled a bee that was clinging to one of the windswept flowers. In her drawing, the bee was hanging on with one little foot to the flower stem, a little speech bubble that said Aaaaaah! Help! floating above its head. She chewed the end of her pencil. She didn’t like it too much. She rubbed the drawing away with an eraser and tried again, but she didn’t like that one either. She tried a third time. She didn’t even know if this iteration was better, because her eyes were blurring with frustrated tears, and she scratched it out so hard that the paper ripped. 

Jester wanted to hurl the book over the cliff, but she just tossed the it a couple feet away and flopped onto her back, her tears falling loose and slipping down her face into her ears, which had already started to ache in the cold wind. She rubbed them dry, hard. 

This wasn’t about the drawing, she knew that. 

All her life she had longed for some strong boy to sweep her up like a grand knight in armor, to love her and to be good to her and know her and never leave her alone like her mother had been left alone, like she herself had been alone for twenty years, hidden away… 

Jester found herself swiping at more tears. She loved the ocean, and Fjord was from the ocean, and he was strong and handsome like all the men in her romance books and he was nice and she loved him! She really did! But not in the way she wanted to. 

She had dreamed of their first kiss, how beautiful it would be and how in love she would feel. But he had kissed her, and she had felt… nothing.

Like taking a sip of what you thought was a sweet tea, only for it to be water. Like thinking something was a cupcake when it was actually just regular bread, and there was nothing distasteful about water and bread, except when you thought you were getting tea and cupcakes. 

It hadn’t made her feel fluttery inside, or made her heart jump like a grasshopper, or made her feel faint, like the heroines of her novels sometimes felt when their heroes kissed them, or even made her want to try another. It had kept her from dying. It hadn’t made her feel alive. 

There must be something wrong with her, Jester thought. Her life was more than romance and kisses and crushes, but it felt terrible to think that she was being cheated out of those things by some broken part inside her. When she pictured her future, when she pictured the person she would love, they looked blurry and strange. It had been so easy to paste a statue of Fjord on that perfect image, but the more she got to know him, the more she realized that the Fjord she had dreamed up in her head didn’t exist, and the world had gone back to that vague, blurred mess. And just now, when she had talked to him before she left on her walk, she had tried so hard to find that connection that she used to believe in, but there was nothing! 

It was just so bewildering--she had felt the love and belonging she wanted from her best friend, Beau, but even if they could be roommates forever like Jester wanted, it just wasn’t the thing they wrote romance novels about. Beau was gorgeous, that was just a fact. It made Jester’s chest hurt sometimes, knowing that Beau was gorgeous and knowing that Beau was just the person she would love to love, if only that were possible. Beau liked every woman, but she didn’t like Jester. She had never flirted with her or tried to kiss her or anything. It hurt sometimes, just like it hurt when Jester thought that there was something in between them, a great roiling confusion where there was something Beau couldn’t or wouldn’t give Jester that she wanted so much, but couldn’t pin down or put a name to. Jester was just like that stupid little bee, clinging helplessly to cheerfulness in the face of turmoil. Or something like that. 

“Hey, Jester? You here?” 

Jester surged upwards at the sound of Beau’s voice, stomach twisting. It was as if she had been summoned, and Jester hastily tried to make herself presentable. She hadn’t noticed herself balling her fists in the grass, but they were smudged with sandy dirt all the same. She quickly rubbed her hands on her skirt, and tried to dash away the evidence of her tears. 

Beau emerged from over a hillock, huffing slightly, and propped her hands on her hips.

“I was bored, thought I might follow you on your walk. It’s beautiful out here.” She paused. “Have you been crying?”

“No,” Jester hiccuped tearfully.

Beau’s brow furrowed in concern, and she came and sat down next to Jester. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, I’m fine, Beau. Really.” 

“You sure? ‘Cause if there’s anything I can help with, I--ah, could do that.”

The wind whipped Jester’s blue hair over her face, strands of it sticking to her mouth. Beau reached out and tucked the errant locks behind Jester’s pointed ear, her fingers brushing the curl of her horn. 

“It’s not important, it’s just… Beau, you know how I like Fjord?”

Beau tensed slightly. “Yeah.”

“I thought he was so right for me but…” 

“He doesn’t feel the same way?” Beau asked, just as Jester blurted “But I don’t!”

“You… you don’t what?”

“Like him! I don’t like him!” Jester cried.

Beau looked utterly baffled. “But you just said… and you’ve been…”

“I’ve been trying so hard,” sobbed Jester. “I know I should and I know he should… but I just can’t and I don’t know why, there’s something wrong with me Beau I know there is-”

“Well,” Beau suggested awkwardly, after a pause. “I mean, I couldn’t like Fjord that way, no matter how much I care for him.”

“I’m not like that, Beau!”

“You do want to date a man?”

“I--” Jester stopped in confusion. “I don’t know!” she cried, and then burst into irrational laughter. “I mean, I don’t want to, but I should! And I can’t say I’m like you because I don’t know!”

“Like me?” 

“Yes! I can’t be because people like you and Yasha, you… you know. And I don’t, so I can’t… right?”

Beau gave no response, but ran her hand through the shaved side of her undercut, and Jester saw her hand was shaking slightly. A few strands of her dark hair had come loose from the tight braid it was tied back in, and they swept across her lovely face with its bowed nose and narrow jaw. Her long-lashed eyes were the same vibrant azure as the sea below.

“Beau,” said Jester slowly, as if some stroke of great inspiration had hit her. “Can I kiss you?”

Beau made a surprised choking noise. “What? Why?”

“Just to see!” Jester said defensively. “How it--how it would feel.”

Beau got up slowly, looking pained. “Jester, I… I can’t.”

“Why?” cried Jester, suddenly angry. She jumped to her feet, tears springing to her eyes for the third time in ten minutes. “You’ll kiss every girl but not me! You don’t flirt with me or- or check me out or anything! What’s wrong with me?”

“Jester, nothing’s wrong with you,” said Beau, alarmed.

“Do you not think I’m pretty? Am I not good enough?”

“No, no, no, no, it’s not that, it’s-”

“What? What is it, Beau?” Jester yelled, her fists clenched at her sides. 

Beau, impassioned, rounded on her. “It’s because kissing people and flirting with them doesn’t mean anything except feeling good, okay? ‘Cause even if I’m attracted to a girl it doesn’t mean I’m in love with them. Kissing can mean kissing and nothing more, but if I kissed you it… it would mean more.” Her voice threatened to break. “So I can’t, alright? We’re best friends. I would ruin everything. I always do.”

With that, she sat down again, hugging her knees, looking defeated.

Jester stood, eyes wide, staring at the space Beau’s face used to occupy. She sat down again, not looking at her. She scuffed the cliffside with the heel of her shoe, letting a chunk of rock tumble loose and land on the beach below with a thump. The wind blew softly around the two of them. 

“What if it didn’t?” asked Jester after a moment.

“Didn’t what?”

“Ruin everything.”

Beau chuckled weakly. “There’s no way you can promise that.” There was another agonizing moment of silence.

“Are you in love with me, Beau?”

Beau groaned into her hands. “I don’t know. I just don’t know what I feel.”

“I know something about that,” said Jester softly. 

Beau huffed out a laugh and moved to brush Jester’s hair behind her ear again. Jester put her hand on top of Beau’s and pressed it to her cheek, warm brown skin on freckle-dusted blue. She could feel the sudden, anticipatory tension between them, and Beau’s tongue darted out and wet her lips. Jester curled her tail around Beau’s ankle. 

“Maybe we could--”

“Yeah,” said Beau.

Jester scooted closer, angling herself toward Beau’s body, then Beau’s hand slipped back into her thick hair and pulled her close and then they were kissing. 

Jester ended up with her top lip in Beau’s mouth and Beau’s bottom lip in hers, and it was wet and maybe would have been funny if all the descriptions from her novels hadn’t suddenly made sense. This kiss was in her heart and stomach, it melted all rational thought from her mind, it made her feel like jumping up again and punching the air and running to the farthest tree and back again except she never ever wanted to move. She put her hands on the sides of Beau’s head and nuzzled into the kiss, breathing in the scent of Beau’s hair and feeling her free hand warm on Jester’s back. Jester could taste something like fresh berries on her full lips and could feel her teeth and tongue as her mouth moved and… wow. Flushing with embarrassment, Jester could feel heat collecting in her lower belly, and, spooked, she pulled away.

Beau looked like she had managed to land a stunning strike on herself. Wiping her mouth, she blinked at Jester.

“How’d that… What did you-”

Jester buried her face in Beau’s neck and hugged her.

“I guess that’s good, then?”

“I liked it, Beau. What does that mean?”

“Whatever you want it to, I guess.”

Jester fell back onto the grass, pulling Beau with her and snuggling into her side. They stayed like that for a minute, Beau running her fingers through Jester’s hair, catching at knots and pulling them gently apart. 

“Are we dating now?” Jester suddenly chirped, her mood sunny again.

“Do you--want to be?” said Beau in a strangled voice.

“I--I think so. I’m not sure exactly what I feel, but maybe that’s okay. I like you, Beau. Like how I tried to like boys. And I’m… I’m not sure what to do, exactly. What do you want?”

“Whatever you’re okay with.”

Jester wrinkled her nose. “That doesn’t help.”

Beau gave her a crooked smile. “I just… I like you too, Jester.”

“I know what I want to do right now,” Jester announced with a smile.

“Mm? What’s that?”

“I want us to climb down to the beach, take off our shoes, and go for a walk in the ocean. And hold hands.” 

“That sounds… perfect,” sighed Beau. “I’ve always loved the ocean.”

Jester grinned. “I bet I can carry you down.”

Beau laughed, and let Jester pull her to her feet, and down to where the soft sands of the beach were waiting for them.

**Author's Note:**

> i was really surprised at how much people liked my first fic, so I just had to write another for beaujes! Thank you so much! 
> 
> kudos and especially comments make my day <3


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